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Anaerobic wastewater treatment

1984; Springer Science+Business Media; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/bfb0000691

1616-8542

Hermann Sahm,

Biofuel production and bioconversion

The article reviews the present understanding of bacterial populations involved in anaerobic degradation of organic material into methane and CO2 (biogas); furthermore some recent process developments for anaerobic wastewater treatment are described. It could be demonstrated that at least three groups of bacteria are involved in methanogenesis. Hydrolytic and acidogenic bacteria first decompose the organic material into various organic acids, alcohols, hydrogen and CO2. The second group of bacteria convert these metabolites into acetic acid, hydrogen and CO2, which are then utilized by the methanogenic bacteria to produce biogas. On an industrial scale, this process has been used for more than 50 years in the stabilization of sewage sludge from municipal water treatment plants. Since recent developments have markedly reduced the retention time for anaerobic fermentation*, this process has gained increasing interest in the treatment of high strength wastewater. The anaerobic digestion has two unique advantages over the aerobic biological treatment systems: no energy is necessary for aeration and the organic pollutants are mainly converted into biogas which can be used as a fuel. Until now this anaerobic process is successfully used for treatment of wastewaters from sugar factories, potato-processing industry and breweries. However, fundamental studies have shown that anaerobic treatment offers an enormous potential for the removal of organic materials from a lot of different wastewaters. Therefore, in future the application of anaerobic digestion for wastewater treatment will increase.